


What About Us

by Glamourchick1668



Category: Endless Summer (Visual Novel)
Genre: Album: Hydra (Within Temptation), One Shot, Song: Paradise (Within Temptation), Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 21:15:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15980654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glamourchick1668/pseuds/Glamourchick1668
Summary: F!MC (Alodia) struggles to make her final decision, face to face with the Endless.





	What About Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NympheSama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NympheSama/gifts).



> So...yeah. As I mentioned in the latest chapter of Book 4, I've been a little obsessed with a particular Within Temptation song that seemed to reflect Alodia at the end of Book 3, trying to make her final decision. Anyway, I hearby dedicate this fic to NympheSama, who encouraged me to write it. So...you know who to blame if it sucks. ;-) I've never been confident in my ability to songfic. 
> 
> Anyway, fans of Book 4, don't worry. This was just brief departure. I will now return you to your irregularly scheduled Daughter of Vaanu updates. :-P Here's the song if you want a listen. Just copy-paste, since I am not sure how making actual links works on this site, or if it's even possible.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy6MpsDPKts

Well. Here I am. Face to face with the Endless. My future self. No...my past self, but grown old. Allowed to live out her life. Sort of. She was born in the same time storm that I was born in. But somewhere along the line, she and I separated. She learned what she was, learned how to turn back the hands of time. How to become a part of time, so that she could save the Catalysts who created her. Somehow, she put a version of herself back into the timeline, a separate consciousness that over two-thousand one-hundred thirty-nine became...well, me. I don't know how that happened. I don't know how we came to separate. Why I have been allowed to stand with my friends, to know them and be known by them—love them and be loved by them—while she has been forced to guide us quietly from the shadows. ...She didn't show me that part.

I raise my clear blue eyes to meet hers. I feel a bitter twist cross my mouth as I gaze wearily at this Dorian Gray portrait in front of me.

 

_There is no sense  
The fire burns _

 

“The world outside this island is dead,” I hear myself inform her.

“It is,” she confirms.

“All those memories I thought I had...they were all lies.”

“Not...lies, exactly,” she sighs. “Stories. Stories your mind told you to hide the truth.”

I fold my arms, scowling. “And what role did you play in these 'stories'? Did you feed them to me while I slept? To Diego? To Sean? They both said they remembered me. Diego said we grew up together! Sean said he watched me doing handstands on the bleachers at Hartfeld! Jake told me he saw my boarding pass in Costa Rica! Did you plant those memories in them?!”

 

_When wisdom fails, it changes all_

 

“No. Alodia...please understand...”

There is a desperate, pleading note to her voice now, a jarring false note in the unbroken stream of an unwilling goddess' world-weary arrogance that I have always known from her. I recoil from it, hugging myself to hide the tremors.

“Understand what?!” I snarl.

“Understand that I have _been_ here! I've been _you!_ I _am_ you!”

 

_The wheel embodies all that keeps on turning_

 

So here we are, two versions of the same woman, wearing two versions of the same damned red spacesuit. She's so young, the woman across from me. The suit still hugs broad hips and pert breast. Her pale skin is still soft and smooth, her hair still falls over her shoulders in golden-blonde waves. This is the woman Jake has fallen in love with two-thousand times; this lithe young thing is his Princess. He trails his cool fingers over her flawless, fresh body. He kisses her full rosebud mouth, cups her soft, unwrinkled cheek and gazes into her clear blue eyes. Her. Not me. But I love him as deeply as she does. I love them all. When she teases Diego, when she scolds Sean, when she snipes at Michelle, she speaks with my love in her voice. When she laughs with Raj and Zahra and Craig, when she is tender with Quinn and Estela, when she supports Aleister and Grace in their moments of insecurity, when she pours words of love into Jake's waiting ear, I am there. And for all their denial, I know they saw it in the temple where I revealed myself to them. They looked at my mouth, they looked in my eyes, and they knew I was their Alodia, though I had abandoned that name a long time ago.

I wanted to save them. I wanted to save _her._ I wanted to save her for them.

She doesn't deserve this.

 

_Blood red skies, I feel so cold  
No innocence, we play our role _

 

I wanted to protect her. I wanted to protect her from having to make this terrible choice. I thought if she made it to this moment, there would be only two choices: preserve the island or give the world to Rourke. I never counted on the third option being available; the choice that I had run from so long ago, full of love for the humans who had dreamed me real, full of the need to save them, full of the need to stay with them, even if it was an alternate version of myself living out that life with them.

 

_The wheel embodies all, where are we going?_

 

I made myself a god to the Vaanti, but behind this suit, I'm still human. A particularly powerful human, to be sure, but a human nonetheless. I am not omniscient or omnipotent. I am falliable. And now Alodia is the one to suffer for that.

 

 _All in all you'd expect the wise to be wiser_  
 _Fallen from grace all and all I guess_  
 _We should have known better_  


Somehow, I know what the Endless is thinking. Her gaze is heavy with the weight of two-thousand lifetimes spent watching the people she loved die, and now with the weight of the knowledge that one way or another, it will all be over soon. It's not her decision to make. It's mine. But she is a version of me. And I know the resentment that's brewing behind the sorrow in her eyes.

 

_What about us?_

 

“We're pawns,” she spits suddenly, with a fury that seems as foreign in her as the desperation. “That's what they made of us, Rourke and Vaanu.”

I turn away sharply. “That's what they made of _me!”_ I growl. “You used me just as much as they did!”

“No, Alodia. That's what I tried to protect you from. It's _why_ I never gave myself back to Vaanu. Why I never...sought the Island's Heart so that I _could_ give myself back. I resented that it saw me as a means to an end when I could still hear the dying screams of the only people who mattered in all the world...”

 

_Isn't it enough?_

 

She laughs bitterly. “...Uqzhaal accused me of using the Vaanti as pawns. All because after watching them slaughter you all time after goddamned time...Jesus God, Alodia, I hope you never remember the way our friends screamed and cried and begged and pleaded for their lives while the feral Vaanti tore them to pieces...”

I can't help shuddering. I close my eyes so she won't see my tears. I don't like the decision she made. I am afraid of it, of the fact that I made that decision once. But I know I would make it. To save Jake...to save Diego...to save any of them...I would throw the Vaanti to the wolves in a heartbeat if that was what it took.

“...I didn't make that choice lightly. But in the end, I made it. I went back and I changed the Vaanti. I made myself their god...and I still couldn't protect you from being a pawn. Do you really think Uqzhaal would have turned on you if he saw you as anything more than a cog in some divine machine that could prevent the end of the world?”

 

_No we're not in paradise_

 

There is nothing left of the world outside the island. Within the time bubble, illusions are rapidly collapsing. This may be heaven, but the rest of the world is in hell. In spite of my best efforts, the tears are flowing now, and I can't stop them.

“...I don't want this...” I whimper. “Please...”

 

 _This is who we are_  
This is what we've got  
No, it's not our paradise

 

The Endless shakes her head. “Alodia, listen to me. I made my decision long ago. This one is yours. But I want you to remember what really matters.”

 

 _But it's all we want_  
And it's all that we're fighting for  
Though it's not paradise

 

I can see her turning it over in her mind. The tears are still flowing freely, but she is tranquil as a summer breeze.

“Them,” she says softly. “ _They_ matter.”

I nod. “The only people in all existence who have ever truly loved us. They're all that matters, Alodia.”

 

 _You and us_  
Or I and them  
There comes a time  
To take a stand

_The wheel is watching all that keeps on burning_

 

Eleven people's need, plus Vaanu's energy. That is what gave me life. I live and die for them. The question now is...will I choose life for myself? Or death? I can't take Rourke's offer. He'll never deliver what he promises. He'll erase everything I've built, everything that has made my family stronger. So the question becomes whether or not I will take myself away from my family...or take their families away from them?

“...They have people they love out there. People who died...”

 

 _The venom works_  
It's like a curse  
A Trojan horse  
When will we learn  
The wheel embodies all that keeps returning  


I know what she is leaning toward, and I feel my heart sinking. I know her mind. It's why I tried to protect her from this choice.

“Alodia...think carefully. ...Think of Jake.”

She looks up sharply. “...Jake...”

“He just watched Mike die again. What will it do to him to lose you in the same day?”

“...I...” She swallows. “He'll have his family...his parents and his sister...”

“He was not planning to spend the rest of his life with his parents and his sister. You were _made_ for him, Alodia. To be his soulmate. To be by his side. ...He won't love again the way he loves you.”

 

 _All in all you'd expect the wise to be wiser_  
Fallen from grace, all and all I guess  
We should have known better...

 

“I don't know! I don't know, Endless! No matter what I choose, they suffer some loss! The loss of everything we've built here, the loss of their families, or...the loss of me...”

“You can't imagine for a moment that it wouldn't hurt them. All of them.”

“I don't,” I reply flatly. “But the fact remains that I can't spare them suffering. No matter what I choose, they suffer.”

“...Then maybe you should consider that there is one other person here who matters.”

 

_What about us?_

 

“What do you want, Alodia?”

She whips around to face me, fury in her tear-swollen eyes. “I want my _life!_ I want my _past!_ I want the life I thought I had before I met you! I want to save the world and end Rourke and preserve the island and go back to that life I thought I had...”

“Oh, Alodia...”

She squares her shoulders, looking me in the eye. “...You were going to destroy it, weren't you. You were going to destroy the crystal pillar so that I couldn't give myself back.”

 

_Isn't it enough?  
No we're not in paradise _

I should have realized she had figured that out. We are two sides of the same coin. Two versions of one person.

“...I wanted to save them,” I say softly. “...I wanted to save you, too. I wanted to spare you. I wanted to give you everything I couldn't have...”

She folds her arms, her expression softening into something resigned. She smiles ruefully. “That's always the way of it with us, isn't it.”

 

_This is who we are  
This is what we've got _

 

“We can't change what we are. We are Vaanu. We are the missing piece. ...I could take your offer. Live the life you wanted for yourself, but that you could only provide for me. Our family intact, and me with them. They won't have to lose me, but they'll lose all connection to their pasts. They'll lose their futures.”

 

 _No, it's not our paradise_  
But it's all we want  
And it's all that we're fighting for

 

“...Or you could give them everything that you can't have. A past. And a future on a planet that no longer burns. A planet where they have family outside of you, outside of each other.”

 

_What about us?_

 

“What do you want, Alodia?”

“You can ask that question a thousand times, but we both know I can't have what I want. I can't have what I want, and so what I want isn't relevant.”

 

_Isn't it enough?  
No we're not in paradise _

 

“Can there be such a thing as Paradise for us while the rest of the world is in hell? While the only eleven people in the world who matter at all are mourning all the people who matter to them?”

 

 _This is who we are_  
This is what we've got  
No, it's not our paradise

 

“Do you think the loss of you will be so much less to them?”

“...Isn't this why I was created? To give them hope?”

 

_But it's all we want  
And it's all that we're fighting for._

 

“You're so much more than that, Alodia.” I can hear that my voice is pleading with her. “To me, to them, to yourself...”

“I know. ...They made me a person. They taught me what love is...”

 

_...But it's not paradise..._

 

“...I can't do it, Endless. I can't spend the rest of eternity watching them mourn for a world I refused to save when I could have.”

“...They'll spend the rest of their days mourning you. ...But you won't have to see it. You may not even be aware of it.”

She closes her eyes, nodding. “...I'll be that little bit of selfish.”

 

 _What about us, what about us, what about us, isn't it enough?_  


She steps toward me, so close that we're almost touching. I feel the fingers of her right hand brush my flesh-and-blood left. Almost as if we're mirror images of one another, we raise our hands to rest palm-to-palm in the space between our shouders. Our fingers twine more easily than they should, still cloaked in red gloves.

 

_What about us, what about us, what about us, isn't it enough?_

 

She presses her forehead to mine, and we both close our eyes.

“Thank you, Endless. ...Thank you for fighting for me.”

“Thank you for fighting for them, Alodia.”

 

_What about us, what about us, what about us, isn't it enough?_

 

I can't hold back a sob. The first real tears I've cried in decades.

“Oh, Alodia...I feel like I'm losing my child. We're the same person, but I spent so long watching you grow...”

“...You aren't losing me. ...I'm just...embarking on a new adventure.”

I laugh bitterly. “...I can't lose you when I'm already lost anyway.”

 

_What about us, what about us, what about us, isn't it enough?_

 

I step back from the Endless, lifting my chin. I let my hands curl into fists, blowing out a shuddering breath.

“...I'm ready...”

She looks at me with maternal fondness. There are a thousand things in her eyes; heartbreak, anger, bitterness, pride, resignation...if I had a lifetime, I could never puzzle them all out. But I know what the message is in the end: _This isn't fair. You deserve better. This is right. ...I love you._

“You are ready,” the Endless agrees. “...My beautiful Alodia. My miracle.”

“They will be safe.”

“Yes. They will be safe.”

 

_...What about us, what about us, what about us, isn't it enough...?_

 


End file.
